1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a method and system for determining (i.e., measuring, predicting or estimating) an Internet user's interest level.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, the Internet and the world wide web have become ubiquitous. The sheer volume of information and services available at any time via the Internet is astounding. As such, users often turn to the Internet to communicate with others, to receive current news reports, to shop, to be entertained, and for assorted other reasons.
As its name implies, the Internet is a network of computer networks. The world wide web is, in turn, an application that runs on the Internet, powered by web servers and web browsers. A web server stores “web pages” made up of documents and files (e.g., text, graphics, audio, video or other media and logic) and can send them to client web browsers that access the server via hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) or another agreed protocol.
A user operating a web browser can direct the web browser to navigate to a particular web page. To do so, the user may enter into the browser a network address of the web page, either expressly or through use of a hyperlink or other logic embedded in a web page or in the browser. The network address can be a raw Internet Protocol (IP) address. Alternatively, the network address can be a textual address known as a universal resource locator (URL), which a network domain name server (dedicated address translation computer) can translate into a corresponding IP address. The browser may then send an HTTP “GET” request to a server at the IP address, and the server may responsively send the web page to the browser, to be displayed to the user.
Typically, a user accesses the Internet through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) system (e.g., a network access server). The user's computer physically links to the ISP system through a suitable communication channel, such as a dial-up telephone connection or a local area network (LAN) connection (e.g., Ethernet, cable, DSL, etc.), which may include wired and/or wireless components. In turn, the ISP then provides connectivity with the Internet. Consequently, as the user navigates through the world wide web, the user's navigation requests and the resulting web pages pass through the ISP on their way to and from the user's computer. Often, an ISP maintains its own web server as well, for use in providing information and services to its users.
In addition, the telecommunications industry has recently embraced a concept known as “mobile IP.” Mobile IP enables a user's computer to be now know connected with most any network on the Internet and to be able to send and receive communications over the Internet. According to mobile IP, each user's computer has a “home agent” server, which maintains authentication and service qualification information for the user.
When the computer is connected to a foreign network, a “foreign agent” server on the network registers the computer with the home agent. In turn, communications to the computer are routed through the home agent, to the foreign agent, and on to the computer. For instance, if a user's computer sends out an HTTP GET request to a web server, the foreign agent might encapsulate the request with a header that designates the home agent as the return address. Consequently, the web server would send the requested web page to the user's home agent, and the home agent would then forward the web page to the foreign agent and on to the user's computer. Thus, in the mobile IP realm, communications with a user's mobile computer, such as navigation requests and resulting web pages, will pass through the user's home agent.